How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

by Crystal Marie Fleming

White supremacist policies and practices ensure that people of color are disproportionately monitored, criminalized, policed, and incarcerated—and racist media coverage ensures that people of color are depicted in ways that justify those same policies and practices. As the study states clearly, officers “over target . . . [and] the news media exaggerate.”40 The end result? Millions of people go to sleep every night after being indoctrinated with police propaganda, inaccurate images of black criminality, and false portrayals of white innocence. And many of them wake up the next day proclaiming that they “don’t see race.” But we know from well-established research that the psychological consequences of being systematically exposed to racist ideas are wide-ranging.